Abstract

Project description: One of the most intriguing discoveries in research on social cognition is that our actions are directly produced by mental representations of these actions. Perceiving our social environment activates knowledge about associated behaviors, be it conscious or not, and triggers mental processes in the service of engaging in the behavior. Although this pervasive social influence on our behavior is now growingly accepted, there is quite some debate about the way in which priming of behavior representations affects actual overt behavior. Whereas consequences of behavior-representation priming are often understood as mere cognitive effects, it has been suggested that behavior-representation priming also leads to goal-directed activity by triggering the motivation to engage in that behavior. This projects aims to further investigate and disentangle these two mechanisms a cognitive and motivational one that underlie effects of priming behavior representations. It is proposed that priming of such a representation can cause an effect through a purely cognitive mechanism, but also that if the behavior representation is associated with positive affect, and thus possesses a rewarding property, this effect is more likely to be produced by a motivational mechanism. Accordingly, extending on research into the functional qualities that differentiate the emergence of mere behavior from motivational, goal-directed behavior, the project tests three motivational qualities of behavior representations associated with positive affect, that make the representation more likely to regulate mental and behavioral processes in the service of the execution of the corresponding behavior. Apart from a better understanding of the distinction between the two different mechanisms underlying behavior-representation priming effects, the proposed project breaks new grounds in predicting and explaining how information in the social environment, such as social stereotypes of groups, concrete behaviors of others, or relations with other people, affects the direction and quality of our behavior.